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January 23, 2013

ENCHANTED by Alethea Kontis, 2012

It isn’t easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true. When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises. The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past—and hers? (Amazon)

Reviewed by Debz

Charming, Magical, Delightful, Enchanting! That just about sums up ENCHANTED. It’s easily one of my all-time favorite books. It’s the ultimate mash-up of almost every fairy tale you’ve ever heard of, and then some!

From the moment I opened the book I knew I was in for a real treat. I was more than right. It reminded me of exactly why I love fairy tale retellings. They breathe fresh air into beloved childhood classics in a way that makes them appealing now.

I think what I loved most were the characters. They stepped right off the page and into your heart. There were all the classic fairy tale stereotypes, and so many more. They each added their own layer of richness and depth to the story, intertwining their own stories with one another.

The writing swept me off my feet and carried me through the most breathtaking plot I ever laid eyes on. It was very smooth and flowed effortlessly. There were so many twists and turns that even I, being a fairy tale expert, couldn’t spot them all. It takes a true master to do that.

If you’ve ever read a fairy tale, or thought about reading one, or even if you’ve lived under a rock your whole life, you need to read this book! You won’t regret it!

And a Second Review by Emily, basically a bibliophile:

Having just read this book, all I can really say is that it's awesome. It's like all my mad fantasies of a world where fairy tales are real just got written out onto a page.

Sunday is the youngest child of a family with limited naming faculties. All of their daughters were named for days of the week - Monday, the oldest, down to Sunday. Sunday copes with being the most unremarkable of her siblings by writing down stories about them all: Her sister Thursday, the Pirate Queen, Monday and Tuesday, the twins who were the Life of the Party, except for Tuesday's tragic untimely end due to an unfortunate pair of red dancing slippers, Wednesday, the dreamy poet, who lives in what her family fondly calls the aerie, Friday, the kindhearted seamstress, who sews dresses for orphans, Saturday, the impatient, hardworking woodcutter who may have a Destiny, and her brothers, Jack, Peter, and Trix.

When she meets Grumble, a talking frog who used to be a man, she is therefore not very surprised. When he one day disappears, her heart is broken, but she is kept busy with preparations for the newly returned prince's ball, and her Fairy Godmother (also her Aunt) Joy has come to teach her to control her stories, which make things come true.

This book is wonderful. It melds multiple fairy tales seamlessly together into something new, something that might even be called . . . magical.